Retro Renegades - Episode: You Smell Like A Brewery

<p>Homebrew, when applied to video games, refers to games produced by &nbsp;hobbyists for proprietary hardware platforms that are not typically &nbsp;user-programmable, primarily video game consoles. These often use &nbsp;storage formats that make distribution difficult (such as ROM cartridges &nbsp;or encrypted CD-ROMs). Many systems have hardware restrictions to &nbsp;prevent unauthorized development. A non-professional developer for a &nbsp;system intended to be consumer-programmable, like the Commodore 64, is &nbsp;simply called a hobbyist (rather than a homebrew developer). &nbsp;The Sega Genesis, known as the Mega Drive[b] outside North America, is a &nbsp;16-bit fourth-generation home video game console developed and sold by &nbsp;Sega. The Genesis was Sega's third console and the successor to the &nbsp;Master System. Sega released it in 1988 in Japan as the Mega Drive, and &nbsp;in 1989 in North America as the Genesis. In 1990, it was distributed as &nbsp;the Mega Drive by Virgin Mastertronic in Europe, Ozisoft in Australasia, &nbsp;and Tec Toy in Brazil. In South Korea, it was distributed by Samsung as &nbsp;the Super Gam*Boy and later the Super Aladdin Boy.[c] &nbsp;Designed by an R&amp;D team supervised by Hideki Sato and Masami &nbsp;Ishikawa, the Genesis was adapted from Sega's System 16 arcade board, &nbsp;centered on a Motorola 68000 processor as the CPU, a Zilog Z80 as a &nbsp;sound controller, and a video system supporting hardware sprites, tiles, &nbsp;and scrolling. It plays a library of more than 900 games on ROM-based &nbsp;cartridges. Several add-ons were released, including a Power Base &nbsp;Converter to play Master System games. It was released in several &nbsp;different versions, some created by third parties. Sega created two &nbsp;network services to support the Genesis: Sega Meganet and Sega Channel. &nbsp;30.75 million first-party Genesis units were sold worldwide. In &nbsp;addition, Tec Toy sold an estimated three million licensed variants in &nbsp;Brazil, Majesco projected it would